Content Manager and Missing Track

[RidderDansk]

Make everything more realistic and more complex (Surveyor 2.0) while ignoring the fact that Content Manager is glaringly bright white and small text (even when Content List Font Size is set to "LARGE") and many of your paying customers are advanced in years and dealing with health issues that include vision challenges. Who cares, we are all going to die eventually. Never mind that means the subscriptions of the deceased will cease being renewed. There will always be younger subscribers willing to pay for content that is more realistic and smaller (for even smaller devices) and more complex (for yet more sophisticated computing hardware, i.e. quantum technology and whatever the future may bring).

Never mind that missing track can be identified and shown with white lines throughout the entirety of a route and trains can even be ran on missing track. But completely leave out the capability to replace missing track in bulk, because that would be completely useful when trackage is a core component of a Train Simulator.

But tout the "benefits" of a Gold Membership Subscription. As long as expectations are within the parameters set by sub-standard design standards. Trainz, the version I subscribe to, is a Windows Application, and Windows Applications are generally more customizable than Trainz Content Manager presently is.

Thank you, Trainz Creators, for creating a nearly useless Content Manager for my seventy-five year old eyes and for completely ignoring the missing track issue. This is not what I pay my subscription for. There is no viable alternative, other than giving up completely on Trainz ever meeting my needs, which seems to be the case. So thank you, Trainz Creators, for completely ignoring my needs. I am completely underwhelmed and so unglad to be wasting my subscription funds on an application that will never approach the level of customization many of your users should expect from a well-designed Windows Application.

 

[Forester1]

I fondly remember Windows 95 when nearly everything was customizable, but Micro$oft has taken much of that away in later years. It seems like fonts have gotten smaller and lighter gray over the years. It would be nice if CM had the properties of a browser where CTRL-MouseWheel could make the text larger or smaller. It seems like that would not take too much to do.

 

[RidderDansk]

I fondly remember Windows 95 when nearly everything was customizable, but Micro$oft has taken much of that away in later years. It seems like fonts have gotten smaller and lighter gray over the years. It would be nice if CM had the properties of a browser where CTRL-MouseWheel could make the text larger or smaller. It seems like that would not take too much to do.

Many web-sites seem to have stopped developing for large screens and are recommending their "users" install their Mobile Apps, which are much too small for my tired old eyes. If the web-site is not fully functional, I stop shopping from that company.

Microsoft Accessibility does offer a Magnifier, but that is not much better than the simplest Band-Aid solution when there is no feature available to change the text size and color scheme. And Microsoft's Contrast Themes must have been thought of by someone 99% Blind.

Greed and designing for the largest audience (young and completely healthy) seems to be the only consideration these days.

 

[OddRails]

Yes, reading tiny text on a bright screen can be difficult for me too. I often feel that our computer programs are made for 25 year olds with good eyesight.

I recently increased the size of the mouse pointer on my screen, it's actually a little annoying, but much easier to find.

 

[JCitron]

The missing tracks can be replaced by replacing the white lines. I'll send you a PM with the instructions for that. It's not that difficult.

As one who suffers from sight problems, I fully understand where you are coming from. Everything today, including websites are meant for the young even if there are so-called tools for the sight impaired. I set my browser to at least 150% zoom-level at the minimum to see text. Recently, I had cataract surgery. While this helps with some of the glare, the stark white with the light-grey text is difficult to see still.

The ever-shrinking text and lighter colors has been an ongoing issue for years and unfortunately, the powers to be at N3V have not bothered to take into consideration that a huge number of the aging population are the ones that use their program. We were not only the earlier supporters of their development, but also still today use the program to not only develop new products for them to sell but also pay a good sum through purchases and subscriptions. While we may have limited incomes, we do have our hobbies and enjoy model railroading among them. We also have the spending power that the younger generation does not, let's face it we don't have to ask mommy or daddy if we can borrow their credit cards, although some spouses do complain. With the cost of owning a physical layout, let alone the space for one, going beyond what we can afford, virtual railroading is a viable option, and we take full advantage of that.

The Trainz program used to be the easiest for everyone to use. The simple download from the web, or an interface that was easy to use via a content manager, allowed everyone to easily enjoy the program content. The interface was logical, with simple to use tools including one to build massive worlds and run trains on them that we could only dream about when we were youngsters, or much older when we could afford to buy a train or two.

The problem is, they've forgotten where they've come from. They've forgotten that it's more than the demanding younger generation who lack an imagination to make things work. The fact that they have to model every leaf on a tree and every blade of grass is a classic example. Seriously, do we need a full wheat field waving its golden stalks in the wind, or heavily detailed ballast that shows every stone? The only thing we're missing is the bugs and ants running on the ground when the trains pass by and I'll bet that'll come along soon in some update.

Fixing things is tough and costs money as do upgrades. Trainz is broken in many places in ways that make it frustrating to use. We've developed workarounds, like we're placing sticky bandages on leaky pipes to prevent the water from pouring on the floor in the kitchen. These workarounds become tiring and frustrating as does the constant support for them. The problem is we come out with our bandages and wire fixes that work just so far but don't solve the problem completely. When a fix is finally completed, perhaps years down the road, it's sometimes difficult to remove the patches we've made to get things to work, mostly due to 100,000-plus assets using it and updating to the new methods will break those assets. We're running into this now with various scripted assets such as signal systems and interactive industries. The content creators developed ways to make these things work because the very undocumented code didn't give them the tools in the first place.

When asked about the interface fixes such as Content Manager and even the actual menu system in TRS19 and up, we were told this is WIP. The content manager we have now came out in 2014 when T:ANE appeared and it hasn't changed. The new menu, slated for an update came out in 2017/2018 when that arrived, and similarly the Content Store in TRS22 is another poor quick and we'll get back to it later example. Surveyor 2.0 is still WIP, as we've been told, but they've yet to remove the grey bars on the sides, making the ability to hid the pallets useless, besides the bars shrink down the display area more as they close in the workspace more.

A year or so ago, I said that Trainz is like an old house that's been under renovation purchased 25-years-ago. When the house was purchased, there was a leaky roof and bad wiring, however the owners put a new swimming pool in the back garden and renovated the kitchen while they put buckets in the bedrooms to prevent the water from pouring downstairs and pennies in the fuse box to prevent the fuses from blowing every time someone turned on a light.

 

[bolivar]

Well said John.

The missing tracks can be replaced by replacing the white lines. I'll send you a PM with the instructions for that. It's not that difficult.

As one who suffers from sight problems, I fully understand where you are coming from. Everything today, including websites are meant for the young even if there are so-called tools for the sight impaired. I set my browser to at least 150% zoom-level at the minimum to see text. Recently, I had cataract surgery. While this helps with some of the glare, the stark white with the light-grey text is difficult to see still.

The ever-shrinking text and lighter colors has been an ongoing issue for years and unfortunately, the powers to be at N3V have not bothered to take into consideration that a huge number of the aging population are the ones that use their program. We were not only the earlier supporters of their development, but also still today use the program to not only develop new products for them to sell but also pay a good sum through purchases and subscriptions. While we may have limited incomes, we do have our hobbies and enjoy model railroading among them. We also have the spending power that the younger generation does not, let's face it we don't have to ask mommy or daddy if we can borrow their credit cards, although some spouses do complain. With the cost of owning a physical layout, let alone the space for one, going beyond what we can afford, virtual railroading is a viable option, and we take full advantage of that.

The Trainz program used to be the easiest for everyone to use. The simple download from the web, or an interface that was easy to use via a content manager, allowed everyone to easily enjoy the program content. The interface was logical, with simple to use tools including one to build massive worlds and run trains on them that we could only dream about when we were youngsters, or much older when we could afford to buy a train or two.

The problem is, they've forgotten where they've come from. They've forgotten that it's more than the demanding younger generation who lack an imagination to make things work. The fact that they have to model every leaf on a tree and every blade of grass is a classic example. Seriously, do we need a full wheat field waving its golden stalks in the wind, or heavily detailed ballast that shows every stone? The only thing we're missing is the bugs and ants running on the ground when the trains pass by and I'll bet that'll come along soon in some update.

Fixing things is tough and costs money as do upgrades. Trainz is broken in many places in ways that make it frustrating to use. We've developed workarounds, like we're placing sticky bandages on leaky pipes to prevent the water from pouring on the floor in the kitchen. These workarounds become tiring and frustrating as does the constant support for them. The problem is we come out with our bandages and wire fixes that work just so far but don't solve the problem completely. When a fix is finally completed, perhaps years down the road, it's sometimes difficult to remove the patches we've made to get things to work, mostly due to 100,000-plus assets using it and updating to the new methods will break those assets. We're running into this now with various scripted assets such as signal systems and interactive industries. The content creators developed ways to make these things work because the very undocumented code didn't give them the tools in the first place.

When asked about the interface fixes such as Content Manager and even the actual menu system in TRS19 and up, we were told this is WIP. The content manager we have now came out in 2014 when T:ANE appeared and it hasn't changed. The new menu, slated for an update came out in 2017/2018 when that arrived, and similarly the Content Store in TRS22 is another poor quick and we'll get back to it later example. Surveyor 2.0 is still WIP, as we've been told, but they've yet to remove the grey bars on the sides, making the ability to hid the pallets useless, besides the bars shrink down the display area more as they close in the workspace more.

A year or so ago, I said that Trainz is like an old house that's been under renovation purchased 25-years-ago. When the house was purchased, there was a leaky roof and bad wiring, however the owners put a new swimming pool in the back garden and renovated the kitchen while they put buckets in the bedrooms to prevent the water from pouring downstairs and pennies in the fuse box to prevent the fuses from blowing every time someone turned on a light.

Well said John.

 

[Forester1]

A year or so ago, I said that Trainz is like an old house that's been under renovation purchased 25-years-ago. When the house was purchased, there was a leaky roof and bad wiring, however the owners put a new swimming pool in the back garden and renovated the kitchen while they put buckets in the bedrooms to prevent the water from pouring downstairs and pennies in the fuse box to prevent the fuses from blowing every time someone turned on a light.

Never thought of it that way, but it is bang on the money John!